


From Transsiberia with Love

by fairy_obvious



Series: Equations [2]
Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:24:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8137165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairy_obvious/pseuds/fairy_obvious
Summary: S5-04. Carrie does get on that train, Quinn follows her, and it’s going to be a hell of a journey.Full of pretty absurd shit, but SHIPPY, a railroad movie a la Russe with the two very familiar passengers on board.UPD People say it's good. Read it, dammit. (I promise I'll learn to write better pitches.)





	1. New Horizons

**Author's Note:**

> Homeland meets the Russian mundane. The piece contains plenty of gory details inherent to Russian railroad trips – true, even experienced – and a lot of linguistic collisions, because, unlike German jihadists, a lot of Russian commoners outside Moscow can hardly speak a word of English.
> 
> Also, sorry for breaking the rules of the game – they do get off the train sometimes. But it’s still the same journey, so please let it be ok.
> 
> This one comes with a mood board! http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/fairy_obvious/20982295/18934/18934_original.jpg  
> You can also browse this for the right mood: https://www.facebook.com/yebenya/?fref=ts
> 
> PS It's pretty raw and unedited for now, but if I don't publish it now, I probably never will. I'll hopefully fix it in the next few days.

Carrie and Quinn were driving to the post office.

\- Get the fuck down, we’re being followed!

\- What do we do, lose him?

\- I’ve got a better idea. Prepare to slide over.

Instead of going downtown, he turned to an old industrial zone with a big abandoned plant he had carefully studied for future use in such urgent occasions. The bottle-green BMW followed at a respectful distance. As they were driving down a narrow passageway between two warehouses, Quinn jumped out of the car, to hide behind a trash container by the wall, and Carrie moved over to the driver’s seat, just in time to see their pursuer in the rear-view mirror, turning into the passageway. She drove on as they had agreed, slowed down at the end of the alley and heard a few gunshots behind, followed by a complete silence. 

In a few seconds, Quinn came running, with the pursuer’s phone in his hand, the dead man’s photo on the screen, and threw it for Carrie to catch.

\- Here, take a good look. I’ll drive.

\- No idea. Never seen him. Wait, there’s a number in the contacts. The number, actually.

She dialed it. A female voice answered in Russian:

\- Da. Sdelano?

Carrie broke off, her mind working fast.

\- Shit. The Russians. That’s who got inside your operation. We have to warn Saul… No, wait. They could be watching him, too. We have to warn Allison.

\- Is it your idea of lying low? Maybe you’d also like to sign a leave of absence at the Foundation and kiss goodbye your boyfriend?

\- Don’t worry, I have her number, I’ll use the hitman’s burner… Fuck… It’s her... It’s her number!

\- What? Where?

\- In the phone. It’s Allison, it was Allison all along, it could have been – it was her voice, it was her voice all right! Quinn, we’ve got her, now we definitely need to warn Saul!

\- Fuck. Un-fucking-believable. 

He had that blank gaze for a moment, trying to process the scale and implications of the disaster. Then he started speaking, his tone not leaving any room for debate.

\- Carrie, she’s the Berlin station chief. I’m an unsanctioned guerilla in a foreign state. You’re an ex-operative with a dubious reputation, whose employer has crossed everyone’s path in that establishment. If it’s her word against ours, guess whose head will be on the spike. As for Saul, for all I’ve heard, he’s sleeping with her. 

\- But he’d never… He and Mira…

\- Got divorced. A lot has happened since you left. Now listen to me carefully. We have about an hour before they establish full surveillance on every transport terminal. We are dumping every phone from this car, ditching the car and getting on the first available train at Hauptbahnhof. End of story.

On second thought, Carrie didn’t protest. Although it was hard to believe, the CIA mess was not hers any more. She had a very particular redhead in her mind who she wildly hoped to see again. And Quinn was the best (if not the only) person who could help her with that. Was already helping her with that. And – yes – she liked the ‘we’ part more than she would have admitted even to herself. Even though – even if – it didn’t matter now.

They took a train to Estonia. The settling evening found them in the dining car, chewing on stale sandwiches, casting around discreet, but increasingly nervous glances and talking in low voices.

\- What’s your fallback destination?

\- Russia.

In fact, Carrie didn’t even say it out loud. She just contoured a big R on the table with her finger. Quinn rolled his eyes.

-You have to be kidding me. After what just happened?

\- Especially so. Who’s going to look for me right under their noses? Besides, I’ve done my homework. I know what I’m in for.

\- Oh do you? You ever been there? On a fun trip, at least? Why R-, of all places?

\- I’ve read a lot. Always wanted to see Lake Baikal. Anyway, it’s not like I’m expecting you to follow me there. Looks like you have some shit to sort out, too.

\- Yeah, sure, I’ll take off and have you killed at the next stop by that guy over there, with a fake-looking moustache and a newspaper. Or that one, in a grandma reindeer sweater, with a serial-killer briefcase?

Carrie raised her eyebrows. It was good and totally unexpected to hear Quinn joke, even on such grim subjects. And she was also taken aback at how protective he was all of a sudden. Not killing her when ordered so is one thing, but continuing to act as her bodyguard when it was technically none of his business any more – that was something different.

\- Quinn. Are you going… with me?

\- No shit I am. After everything I’ve already done to keep you alive, having you killed would be a massive waste of efforts. Besides, my Berlin job seems over, with an unclear outcome, to say the least – and I need to figure out a more discreet way of returning to the States than declaring my face at the Deutsche passport control.

So logical, so sensible. No way could she elaborate further on the “with me” part after such a tirade. 

\- How sweet. Well, thanks… I guess. So when will you be able to tell that I won’t get killed?

\- Dunno. We’ll see to that… See you in Car 3, I’ll go check on that weirdo with a laptop who just took off. It seems I might have seen that mug before.

Alone, Carrie banged her forehead slightly against the window. Quinn had never been the type to wear his heart on a sleeve, but over these two and a half years, he seemed to have grown a shell so thick that she couldn’t hope to crack it open in a more or less discreet manner. What was his hidden agenda after all? She was pretty sure she could rule out affection at that point. So what did he have in mind?

For example, she hadn’t told him that the Baikal was far from being her dream destination: her presumable route included Mongolia, China, then Hong Kong, probably, or Singapore, then meeting up with Frannie in some quiet and warm South-East Asian state, Thailand, perhaps — lots of sun and fruit, hordes of downshifters and just tourists from all over the world, would be a piece of cake getting new identities there. It’s not that she didn’t trust Quinn – she hadn’t doubted his loyalty for a second – but she just needed to have a bit more faith in this plan herself before she could let anyone doubt its feasibility. 

Anyway, seized by a frantic, though explicable paranoia, they didn’t get another opportunity of an unhurried conversation. It took them almost all the way to Tallinn to make sure no one had followed them on the train. They changed carriages, hid behind magazines, watched over suspicious individuals and even scared the shit out of some exchange-student guy, who was unlucky to pull his smartphone from the inner pocket of his jacket too abruptly, while staring at Quinn in an empty car vestibule.

The journey took them a little less than two days and by the end of it, Carrie had already upped her lithium and Quinn was on the verge of hijacking the train and locking up in the driver’s cabin. Combined with their usual professional over-efficiency, the plague of long-distance train journeys – when you have nothing to do and can’t stop obsessing over one particular issue, such as being hunted by a foreign intelligence service – wasn’t really doing them any good.

In Tallinn, Carrie used her connections to get a fake passport for Quinn (a Rory O’Brian from Dublin, a fresh Russian business visa included) and a nice chunk of Russian cash in exchange for her fallback dollars. They bought tickets to Moscow, a couple of Russian phrase books and some handknit woolen socks from coarse local yarn. They were spies and they knew shit: if going to Russia, bring warm clothes. Something most invaders starting from the eighteenth century persistently seemed to forget. What they didn’t know, however, is when it gets really cold in Russia, woolen socks won’t get you anywhere — you will also need woolen mittens, a woolen hat, a woolen scarf and a woolen pullover. A woolen overall, preferably.

So there they were, on a platform again. For reasons which made complete sense, and also for some other reasons hanging in the air along with the milk-thick Estonian fog, Quinn had insisted that he and Carrie travel in different compartments, even different carriages. Now it was time to say goodbye for a while, before meeting at the other side. Supposedly. But looking at Quinn’s detached, even aggressive air, Carrie was sure he’d jump the train at the first stop and be gone for good. And she really wanted to be cool with it, but the thought almost made her choke:

\- So… Looks like we’re okay for now.

\- Hope so. Time to go.

He wasn’t even looking at her. It was a perfect moment to make him lay his cards on the table and to say their final goodbyes in a proper, civilized way, but instead, Carrie started grasping at straws, immediately hating herself for it. 

\- Wait… When do we… How do we communicate on the train?

\- We don’t.

\- But what if… How do I reach you?

\- You don’t. We don’t know each other. Never seen each other. No contact till Moscow.

\- Quinn, you’re overdoing it again! We’re fi-

\- Oh, for fuck’s sake, just get on the goddamn train! And don’t call me that, remember?

\- No. I mean, yes. You’re right, fine. But you go first.

\- I.. what?! Fine, Carrie, whatever. As you please.

He turned on his heels and walked away in long, angry, I-don’t-give-a-fuck strides, his tall, dark figure visible for a long time even in the crowd of departing passengers who had started filling the platform. “And don’t call me that,” she muttered with a bitter grin. After seeing him jump into his car – a desperate superstition rather than any actual guarantee of meeting him again, – she finally got on the train as well.

The journey to Moscow was a long-awaited opportunity of a good sleep – contrary to what you might have seen in some movies, even lovelorn spies on the run sometimes need it, too – with a couple of tense moments, like crossing the two borders with an amount of cash slightly exceeding the allowed limit (pff, just one or two extra zeros at the end) or having to sustain a minimal level of small talk with some particularly curious fellow passengers.


	2. Into the Wild.

In Moscow, the plan was to get on a train which would take them to Irkutsk, the big Siberian city on the Baikal: big enough to cover their tracks and remote enough to stay away from counter-intelligence chiefs from the capital. 

The Russian Railroads website with an English version would have been perfect – but for the fact that they only had cash. So they headed for the line in front of the ticket office. In fact, there were many lines in front of quite a few ticket offices in the whopping hall of Leningradsky Station, with people migrating hectically from one line to another, asking others to hold their positions, arguing over positions which had been lost and trying to figure out which ticket office was the quickest.

Unfortunately, there had been no way to find out if the ticket agent spoke any English before they approached the counter.

\- Two tickets to Irkutsk, please. Next train.

\- Kupe, platskart?

Carrie started leafing through the phrase book. The line stirred. A shy girl with freckles, who was next in line, came to the rescue.

\- Platskart is when you… erm… go together?.. No door?.. Sleep together?..

\- Wh- What? Carrie and Quinn gasped incredulously at the same time.

\- Uh.. sorry. No.. not you.. all people… sleep together. In one room. No door.

Now that’s promising.

\- Like a… big sitting car? Carrie suggested.

\- No… (The girl already regretted her intervention.) Sleeping… Cheap… Very cheap.

Wow. OK. The line began mumbling, unintelligibly, but belligerently. Too many eyes on them, time to get moving. Well, at least, saving a few rubles on traveling expenses sounded sensible. Quinn thrust a handful of cash and their passports into the slit and blurted out, trying to sound as confident as possible:

\- Platskart.

Now that the tickets were in place, they still had a couple of hours to prepare for the plunge into the great Russian unknown. 

Quinn melted in just fine – it seemed like few Russian men seriously considered wearing any other color than black at this time of year: pitch-black, washed-out black, dirt-smeared black, dusty black, black with black letters on it, black leather, black suede, brownish-black fur (posh one!) – you could think there were only so many shades of black, but wait – the list continued updating.

On the other hand, Carrie felt she looked outlandish. Carefully observing the looks they received from passers-by, she came to a definite conclusion that Quinn was viewed as handsome. Well, handsome he was, of course, but back home he had some competition, in an average environment. Not the case here, apparently – even though he was neither wearing nor looking his best. Meanwhile, Carrie did not catch a single flattering gaze from indigenous males. If they were to act like a couple, she had to live up to certain standards. What got you a steamy one night stand in Virginia barely passed for a nine-to-five-job dress code here (if you aimed at looking pretty, or course). 

So she went out of the railway station for some camouflage shopping. There was no need to go far: counterfeit bags, hats, shoes, fake branded clothes and watches, ushanka hats, matryoshka dolls and cell-phone accessories jumped at her, along with a powerful stench of fried dough, stale booze and piss, right in the underground passage across the square in front of Leningradsky Station. After a brief, but insightful analysis of local trends, she went for a leopard silk scarf and a faux-crocodile “GUSSI” handbag, also grabbing some creepy-looking make up and a heavy necklace with acid-colored plastic jewels from a foldable table, just before the merchant behind the table cast a wary look at the approaching policeman and started dumping the goods into a large checkered shopping bag, evidently preparing to run for it.

After she applied the changes in the station lavatory – ditched the goddamn wig, made a high ponytail, put some make up on, stared into the mirror, sighed and added some more, put on the jewels and the scarf, and slid her convenient crossbody into the cumbersome crocodile GUSSI, – she hurried to the agreed meeting point, discreetly checking out the effect her new look had on guys she passed by. Quinn appeared with a pile of cheap magazines, for housewives and retired ladies, by the looks of them, with ghastly-looking foodporn and Muscovite celebrities on covers. Carrie sneered:

\- What is it, your idea of going local? 

\- Crosswords. Everybody does them on trains. If we want to communicate in writing, we can pretend we’re doing them too – less conspicuous…

And then he fell silent and looked at Carrie for a while. She was prepared to hold her ground, but the funny thing is, he didn’t laugh. Neither was he appalled. Actually, for the first time since their paths crossed again, Carrie could swear she saw something vaguely resembling interest in his eyes. Warmth. Affection… Tenderness? Longing? What? Why? She forced a coquettish smile. He didn’t pick up the ball. Turning around, he dropped: 

\- Come on, the train leaves in an hour, we probably need to get some last-minute supplies.

Carrie scorned herself for letting her imagination run wild. Then scorned herself again for getting so upset about it. Then started wondering if she had been right, after all. Then went back to step one. 

The thing is, at that moment Quinn realized he won’t be able to say goodbye to her anytime soon. He felt they had already traveled too far for their paths to diverge, both geographically and metaphorically. In her new image, though intentionally cheap and vulgar, Carrie looked so young and dashing it almost hurt to watch. What was he doing here with her, really? Why had he even bought the fucking ticket? She was relatively safe, if you could be safe in a country whose intelligence service had just attempted to terminate you, and she had not declared any intention to include him in her new life. Except it was probably harder to fly to Missouri from here. And she didn’t have much of a new life yet. And she was a little lost in the Russian mayhem which you can’t prepare for by reading any amount of books. The situation of her dependence on him, of their interdependence – it was probably still too early to bring up the subject of love at that point – was something he just couldn’t let go. And now this. The make up. The hair. Fucking flashbacks.

However, soon they had something to take their minds off these little affiliates of personal hell. A few minutes later, they were staring at the departure dashboard, looking for their train.

\- Do you see an ‘Irkutsk’ here? Cos I don’t. Do you think it could be delayed?

\- Wait, let’s check the date on the tickets… Carrie. 

\- Mhm?

\- The station. We need a different fucking station.

It always gives you a nice adrenaline buzz to find out that your train departs from a different Moscow station in about twenty minutes. And – wait for it – you’re very lucky if the two stations are located in the same square. Well, we all know by now that Quinn and Carrie are lucky, in this universe, at least. So after a short investigation (Carrie’s upgraded charms got them the assistance of a very polite bespectacled guy who even volunteered to accompany them to the platform), they ran out of Leningradsky Station, turned left and found the station they needed, Yaroslavsky, literally next door.

The voluptuous car hostess with a maquillage which made Carrie look like a Sunday-school teacher by comparison checked their tickets, read their passports thoroughly, although with little understanding in her eyes, and let them on the train. And then it dawned on them that the freckled girl couldn’t have been more right even if her language skill were above average. All people. Sleeping together. In one room. No doors. There were compartments, four beds in each, but no doors indeed, and the wall opposite the compartments had beds, too. At first it even seemed there were three levels of beds, but – phew – the third level was for luggage.

Two upper beds, midway through the car. Carrie let out a nervous giggle.

\- That’s us then. 

Quinn was a military man, after all, and even if he was impressed with the conditions, it was beneath him to show it. He shrugged, threw their bags on the sky-high third shelf, and climbed on his bed. The late hour was a perfect pretext to avoid any further conversation with Carrie. Avoid looking at her. Ignore her piercing radiance he didn’t know what to do with anymore. As the train started rocking back and forth, he fell asleep surprisingly soon. Not for long, though.

Trust me, if you’re above kindergarten age and you have not done it before, the first night in a “platskart” car will give you some bright memories to hold on to. (Besides, the mysterious “platskart” is a boring third-class sleeping compartment on the website – tips for travelers, avoid or enjoy.) Even if you’re not an ex-CIA agent on the run, wanted by the intelligence forces of the country you’re hiding in, the feeling of someone’s head brushing gently against your bare heels in the middle of the night can be a refreshing sensation.

Quinn was not on a train to Siberia any more. Instead, he was in a ghastly hideout somewhere in the outskirts of Aleppo, running low on supplies, waiting for attackers any second, staring into the pitch-black Syrian night, with rats fussing on the floor, their disgustingly sleek warm bodies whooshing past his feet, always too fast to catch. And then an explosion came. On full alert, he sprung to his feet –

And bam! No, not the long-time coming sex. An actual “bam” of Quinn’s head against the baggage shelf. You can’t sit up on an upper bed, not unless you’re a midget or a small kid. Quinn was neither – do we all remember Carrie was a lucky girl? The oncoming train, which had woken him up, was clattering past them. He looked at Carrie, who fit in just fine and was evidently having a great sleep, despite the snore symphony in the car, and he honestly, sincerely hated her for it. Except he loved her, too. 

Ouch. Bad timing. The three a.m. When you come up with the brightest and craziest ideas, when you let go of the barriers that block your soul and your thinking during the day, and then you can’t sleep until you think it all out, and then you do, and the outcome of your thinking is so brilliant that you are afraid of falling asleep and losing it all, and… Have I mentioned it is arguably the worst time for waking up next to the person you have loved dearly, crazily, bitterly, unrequitedly for the last few years? Have I said that the feelings you’ve almost succeeded in tucking away and strangling to death take their sweet revenge on you for the long months of neglect?

So he just lay there, agonizing, scheming, wondering, then decided to get some fresh air now that he couldn’t sleep anyway. As he carefully climbed down from his bed, Carrie stirred in her sleep, her blanket now hanging halfway down, almost falling. Without thinking, he tucked it back up, feeling her sleepy, tempting warmth for a second, his hand lingering on her waist for a fraction of second longer, and then she muttered something without waking up, and he jerked back his hand, as if from something burning, and almost ran toward the vestibule. 

The sun was creeping onto the surreal foggy landscape. Gloomy dark fir trees, never-ending fields without a sing of cultivation, already touched with frost, scattered grey villages of a dozen houses, half of them abandoned… He dwelled on a recent linguistic acquisition from an alternative Russian phrase book he had fetched in Tallinn: yebe’nya – the word you use to call an entire region a shithole; also, a remote, distant land. The two meanings finally converged for him. Despite crossing half the world on his missions, he had never covered such distances by train or car. The all-too-common Russian vastness was not a cliché any more – it was tangible now. It looked like Carrie knew what she was doing with this crazy fallback idea of hers. Carrie. Carrie. Carrie-Carrie-Carrie. Nothing more interesting was going on in his mind, let’s leave him there.

Meanwhile, Carrie was lying on her bed, wide awake too, wondering what the hell had just happened.


	3. The Longest of Bad Days

The morning went on. Did I say my story wasn’t all shippy? Well, half a hundred passengers of a platskart car queuing for the bathroom in the morning is beyond “not shippy.” So let’s omit the inevitable morning turmoil of a long-distance train. I’ll just leave it here for the setting.

Carrie slid down from her bed, rather clumsily, her back and hips numb because of the stiff mattress. Their neighbors on the lower beds were still fast asleep. Quinn was sitting on the vacant side bed at the opposite window; the mid-section of the bed formed a tuckaway table, and the two remaining sections formed chairs. Why is it important? Imagine a close, inevitable vis-à-vis with someone you need to have a profound, chance-of-a-lifetime conversation with, and you will get an idea of how our heroes felt at that instance. A Mexican standoff in a stranded elevator. 

\- Morning. Got us some tea.

\- Morning.

“Hey, um… did you actually touch me when you were putting my blanket up?” And in fact, Carrie could have braced herself to say something of sorts. Because she wasn’t sixteen or sheepish. Because he fucking did. But then she saw the look on his face; god, the man hated her. Now she was even more confused. Why follow her here? Did he feel responsible? Knowing Quinn, he could have considered it his self-assigned task to keep her alive. And he’d never leave a job unfinished, as much as he disliked it. Yeah, that made sense. What didn’t make sense was the trail of sparkling warmth left by his hand, still tangible on her skin. Was she imagining things again? Anyway, they had to remain on speaking terms, at least. She felt she had to say something.

\- Mm, tea’s great. Tea glass holders and lemon, classy. You alright?

\- Yeah. Didn’t get much sleep though. 

Ah, fuck it. What was there to lose, anyway. Carrie dived in headfirst, with an undercurrent that would have made Chekhov green with envy:

\- I figured as much.

Quinn was not into Russian classic playwriting, but the message was received.

\- Excuse me?!

\- You heard me.

\- Oh, sorry I woke you up – is that what you want to hear?

\- Not quite.

\- Okay, not sorry then. Are we done here?

\- What, you’ve a better place to go all of a sudden?

Fuck. Fuck! She didn’t just say it, did she? Please don’t say yes, please don’t say yes, please…

\- Enjoy your tea.

He climbed back on his bed and pretended to fall asleep. Call him a coward, but there was only one thing worse than accidentally pawing the love of your life in a dark compartment, and it was confessing to the fact. 

Carrie immersed in her books, and the day continued with little to no progress in terms of, you know…

Around noon, they went to grab some lunch in the dining car, stunk out of their carriage by an unthinkable odor of all kinds of food devoured by their fellow passengers, with the predominating note of instant noodles. 

As they were sitting at one of the tables, carefully avoiding eye contact, a tiny red-haired toddler boy stomped past them, making Carrie’s heart drop. She turned her head to the window, biting her lips not to start sobbing, and Quinn put his hand on hers. In broad daylight. Almost looking her in the eye. It was a gesture of pure sympathy – just squeezing her hand, not stroking, not caressing, something you could do to a colleague. A distant relative. A poker buddy. 

And she almost broke, leaning forward across the table, desperate to keep this comforting touch, but froze under his attentive, scrutinizing gaze. She was Carrie Mathison, not some damsel in distress to throw herself at a man who was staying with her out of self-proclaimed duty. Nothing wrong with some no-strings-attached sex to keep your mind off things, but in his case, there were just too many strings, attached or not. Firmly and confidently, she removed her hand, wiped her eyes and managed a semblance of a smile.

\- Thanks. Sorry.

\- It will get better, you know.

Yeah, no shit it will. When she gets Frannie back, it will get a hell of a lot better. But right now she really wanted to kick something solid and heavy. Or…

\- Oh, you sure know a thing or two about being a parent.

Quinn stared at her in disbelief. 

\- Fuck, Carrie. No, we’re not fighting about my family situation – or the lack of it. We can fight about something else if you want. Like, what’s your fucking problem with me today!

\- Today? To-day?! I changed my life because of you, Quinn, two years ago, when you ran off to fucking Syria without as much as texting me and I couldn’t go back to that CIA shit anymore. And as I said, I found a good life, but it’s not like it’s working wonders for me right now. And here you are again, the walking moral high ground, the Good Samaritan with a fucking gun, only I haven’t got the slightest clue as to why on earth you’ve taken this train and you’re not helping. So why?

\- Told you already.

He looked wearily out of the window. Carrie was still catching her breath after the speech, astonished at having actually dragged all these things out in the open. Well, high time. There was no turning back now, so she pressed him further. 

\- I don’t buy it, sorry. 

\- Too bad. And, for your information, I didn’t ‘run off’ to fucking Syria, I went there. Because it’s my job. Was my job. It’s you who ran off to fucking Missouri, or wherever it is that you have a brother or something. But it’s fine. In fact – I’m glad you did. Saved us both a lot of trouble.

\- Right. Go ahead, be an asshole. You don’t even believe what you’re saying, but fine. You know what? Actually, let’s play that you’re right, for a little while… So I guess I’m the one to say sorry, right? Okay then… I’m sorry, Quinn. I truly am. I wish I hadn’t left then. I wish I hadn’t spoken to you the way I did… (And she did say it in a different voice, as if she really meant it.) See? Didn’t kill me, did it? You wanna play too?

\- Oh, get the fuck off me with that Brody routine of yours. 

\- Um… Sure. Anytime.

Carrie stood up abruptly and headed back to their car, finding it a bit harder than before to remain steady on her feet in the rocking train. She paused for a while in a dull-lit grey vestibule, gasping for air. Words had always been her weapon of choice, and she knew how to turn them into poison, into an incentive, even a gift. None of this had ever worked on Quinn, however... What she hadn’t known was how it felt to have him as an adversary. And though she’d never had a knife put through her hand, it must have felt exactly like this.

Quinn was still sitting at the table, his face buried in his hands. Why was doing the right thing always so hard? Of course, he saw everything, of course, he understood her when she grasped back his hand and looked at him, wildly, desperately, a look he’d have killed for just two years ago, but where were they headed now? Was she trying to get him because she needed his skills and protection? Or was she lonely and miserable enough to cling to the next available man? He could not decide which option was more humiliating. Neither did he see any other – buried hopes are not so easily dug out.

Half an hour later, the train pulled up at a small station with another unintelligible Cyrillic name. He went out for a minute, almost welcoming the drizzling November rain and a cloud of cheap cigarette smoke enveloping the platform.

Carrie was sitting on one of the side chairs in their compartment, with her knees up to her chest, looking out of the window with an absent-minded gaze. In the dining car with Quinn, after a careful examination of the menu and a strenuous conversation with a waiter, Carrie had deduced that borshch (the celebrated beet-root soup) could actually be her only chance of a vegetarian option. But after fishing an unmistakable chunk of chicken out of her plate, she had given up on it. And then there was the toddler boy and the fucked-up conversation, so she hadn’t had any lunch.

Quinn came back, his hair wet and spiky from the rain. Carrie didn’t turn her head. He dropped a transparent plastic bag filled with some rustic pastries on the table – an elaborately casual gesture.

\- Here. You gotta eat something.

She cast a side glance at the bag.

\- Ugh, what are these?

\- They call them pirozhki. If you’re lucky, some of them are even without meat, but I can’t guarantee that.

\- All right, give me one.

As starving as Carrie was, she still wasn’t looking at him, just holding out her hand. Quinn hesitated.

\- A thank you would be nice.

Finally, a look in the eye. Pissed-off, bitter, but still.

\- You’ve used up your share of niceties for today. Give me the fucking pie. 

She sniffed it, took a careful bite and started chewing. Quinn took it as a sign of encouragement. The game went on.

\- No meat, I presume?

\- Um, potatoes. It’s good actually. You should have one too.

She pushed the bag toward him with a daring look.

\- Wanna make sure I haven’t poisoned them? 

\- Nah, not your style. But I want you to share my suffering if someone else has.

\- I’d rather stay alive and avenge you. That’s my style… So you’re still mad at me, I presume?

And then the magic ended.

\- … No. I mean, why would I? You’ve never been a perfect gentleman, and we’re not exactly ballroom-dancing here, so even if you don’t always care to phrase your thoughts in a delicate way – I’m a big girl, I can take it. You’ve made yourself clear, message received, so let’s just… 

Damn it. She was obviously more offended than he’d realized. She had meant what she’d said at lunch. She cared. So yeah, it was a good sign. One of those good signs you just don’t know what to do with. Another dead end.


	4. Finally, Vodka

At some point of the journey, the elderly couple they were sharing the compartment with got off the train. Instead, a gang of four average-looking guys in their thirties occupied the remaining beds in the compartment. All dressed in similar black sportswear, they also had similar close haircuts and similar sports bags instead of suitcases. Confined to their upper beds, Carrie and Quinn exchanged concerned glances, while the new neighbors were settling in. 

As if the compartment wasn’t crowded enough already, the new guys were soon joined by two more pals of theirs, who were traveling in a different car, presumably. The merry crowd got down to business as soon as the train left the station, immediately procuring a few bottles of local vodka and various snacks from their bags, which lead Carrie to a logical conclusion they were not an athletic team, in spite of their clothes. 

Suddenly, one of the guys met Quinn’s gaze and apparently misread his intentions. With a wide grin showing a couple of golden teeth, the man hit himself playfully with the back of his right hand on the left side of his neck. Quinn stirred on his bed, firmly grasping the gun hidden under the dusty mattress. Was this shabby creature actually threatening them with immediate demise on the spot? Why the grin, then? Maybe this gesture meant something else in the R-land? Before he could come to any linguistic conclusion, the guy waved his hand dismissively at the dumb mute, looked at Carrie and grinned even wider, pointing at the bottle on the table.

\- Vodku budesh?

She nodded automatically, relieved to have understood his intentions, at least. Quinn sighed. Why the fuck not. It’s not as if they had a rich leisure program for the evening. Neither did they have any alcohol of their own, and the setting required some drastic measures. Besides, if someone is drinking vodka next to you on a Russian train, it’s always more fun to participate, than to witness. Although not always more prudent. Actually, never prudent.

The vodka was awful, and the snacks even more so, but the guys seemed genuinely hospitable and relaxed, making room for Carrie and Quinn by the window and trying to recall the few English words they remembered. “Za vas!” proclaimed a balding guy with a wry smile, apparently proposing a toast to Carrie. “Na zdorovye!” she tried to be polite in return, throwing the Russians into a fit of laughter, because they never, never ever use this expression as a toast. They had a few more rounds, and the vodka didn’t seem so awful anymore. Somewhere in the far corner of her mind Carrie remembered she would have been sober for almost a year now. But that was in a life she no longer had.

Quinn was sitting in a corner by the window, with his glass in his hand, carefully watching hers as well – useful habits of a spy who knows his way around bars. It felt so good to see her smile, blush, communicate with their haphazard companions through funny gestures and the scarce Russian phrases she read out loud from her pocket phrase book. She looked lively, charming, even carefree – a perfect act of an innocent foreign tourist. It was the vodka. It wasn’t for long. It wasn’t meant for him. But he got kind of lost in the moment. 

And then the lights went out. No, nothing terrible happened – not yet – but you just don’t get to choose your bedtime in a third-class compartment. So they were left with a feebly flickering yellow something, and our heroes felt the party had come to a logical end. Carrie excused herself with an awkward smile and headed for the bathroom. Quinn stayed at the window. Out of a sudden, he realized one of the guys was missing, too – the tall one, with a greasy ponytail and bad teeth. He moved toward the aisle, but the others were blocking him. It took him less than two seconds to realize they were doing so on purpose. They were saying something to one another – of course, he didn’t understand the words, but the tone was far from relaxed now – and you don’t need a translation for a dirty smirk either. 

He immediately felt very sick and very sober, the remains of vodka being washed away by an unstoppable tide of cold, black fury which had accumulated over the years of killings and atrocities, to become his second, dark self. The gang conveniently mistook the brief moment of his sitting back and half-closing his eyes for hesitation and fear, and some of them were self-assured enough to look away. Little did they know what they had coming. Silent hand-to-hand combat was something he’d mastered among his primary action skills, and the scumbags were not too enthusiastic about making much noise either. Shoving their unconscious bodies on beds, to avoid any attention from whoever could be passing by, he ran to the vestibule, already hearing the muffled sounds of fight.

Just a few steps separated him from the vestibule door when it suddenly got silent. And cold, freezing cold, in spite of the stuffiness. Fighting the desire to storm through the door, he caught his breath and crept toward it, before swinging it wide open. Carrie was in the corner of the vestibule. Alive. Her hair was a mess and her tee-shirt was torn at the neck, she was shaking, but apart from that seemed unharmed. The man, who had chased her into the corner, now turned abruptly and was looking at Quinn. In his hand he had a knuckle knife he must have just pulled out, which explained the sudden silence. 

She had never actually seen him kill anyone with his bare hands, and though she realized what he was capable of, it was still disturbing. Unable to look away, she just stood there, transfixed, watching him disarm the guy, choke him, break his neck and push the body out of the car into the damp chilly darkness along with the knife which he used to force the primitive lock. It was a pure miracle no one had walked in on them yet. Quinn slammed the door shut and turned to Carrie, who was still shaking, pale as a sheet, her lips quivering as though she was trying to tell him something, but couldn’t. He grabbed her by the shoulders, examining her face, her arms, her clothes for traces of blood or injuries:

\- Are you hurt?... Are you alright?...Talk to me, goddamit, say something.

\- C-Cold. 

They were only wearing tee-shirts, and he couldn’t give her a sweater or a jacket to wrap herself in. So he put his arms around her like it was the only thing to do. And she hugged him back, burying her face in his chest, biting at the soft cloth so as not to whimper from relief. Quinn closed his eyes. It didn’t matter anymore if she planned to use him or just accepted him as the only available option. He could have been late. She could have been dead. He wasn’t. She was alive. The rest didn’t matter. 

As the back of her head pressed against the vestibule wall, Quinn’s lips on hers, Carrie could swear the train was not just rocking on a particularly dense intersection of rails any more – it was floating in midair, doing barrel rolls and loops.

\- Muzhchina! Muzhchina!

The carriage hostess was prodding Quinn on the shoulder. He remembered this one – to his surprise, the general word for “man” was widely used as an address here. What is it, railroad vice police on the lookout? But the hostess was smiling hospitably, as if trying to make up for the lack of her communication skills, and waving her hand energetically, ushering them into her tiny two-bed compartment. However, before they could enter, she blocked the way with her arm and fumbled in her pockets, taking out a piece of paper and a pencil. She scribbled “1000,” then looked at them shrewdly and added “$,” emphasizing the finality of her offer with a thick line under the amount. Quinn thrust the banknotes he had on him in her hand, without even looking at the amount, and she disappeared with a satisfied harrumph. 

As soon as they shut and locked the compartment door, Carrie’s eye was caught by a small square object, carefully placed in the center of the small table. A glossy cardboard pack with a picture of a half-naked girl in a red hussar’s uniform. The Cyrillic brand name was corresponding: “G-U-S-A-…” Condoms. Hussars’ condoms, courtesy of the house. Fucking on a Russian train to Siberia, with hussars’ condoms, after drinking vodka, what the actual fuck? 

Of course, she didn’t take this long to process all of it in her mind. From Quinn’s perspective, she just waved her hand at the table, bending in a fit of laughter, first silent, then louder, then roaring with laughter, almost sobbing, then actually sobbing, letting go of all the unbearable tension and strain of the past few days, all the fatal dangers lurking behind every corner, all the bitter words they had been throwing at each other, the uncertainty, the coldness, the shit, the shit they’d been through, letting it go, all of it… 

He took her in his arms again, and sat by her side, waiting, striking her hair, touching it gently with his lips, staring into the thick darkness outside the window, with rare jewels of distant lights, and then she pushed back her hair and looked at him in the darkness, running her fingers along his cheekbone, down his neck, across his chest, grabbing him by the tee-shirt and pulling slightly, and he caught her by the waist and placed her onto his lap abruptly, almost roughly –

And then BAM! They did it. Except you can’t bam-do it in a Russian sleeping compartment, with its luxurious fifty-centimeter-wide beds and a cozy canopy formed by the upper bed. So there was a lot of wriggling, and bumping against objects, and swearing, and laughing, and breathing, and more breathing, and slow breathing, and ragged breathing, and oh-my-god-don’t-stop breathing and then the train did some more physics-defying aerobatics for both of them. And it wasn’t glorious, or gorgeous – if you were to film it, you wouldn’t know where to start, seriously – but saying that neither of them complained would be a major, unacceptable understatement.


	5. The Power of Will

The reality started to creep back on them in hundreds of shattered, misplaced and irrelevant fragments – someone’s steps in the vestibule, the clatter of another oncoming train, the bluish glimmer of Quinn’s watch on the table… This late? How come it was almost morning already? Quinn got dressed, quietly slid aside the compartment door and was gone. Carrie sat up, switched on the night lamp and ran her fingers through her hair, unable to hold back a smile, in spite of their highly questionable prospects at the moment. As it turned out, ‘highly questionable’ was a far too optimistic way to put it.

\- Shit, Carrie, one of them is dead and the rest are gone. And someone’s taken our money.

\- Impossible, it's sealed in the bottom of the bag. Are you sure these are our bags?

\- Yeah, someone cut them up and took our money. And passports.

She started pulling her clothes back on, frantically, fidgeting with the zipper on her jeans, getting into her tee-shirt, no, inside out, no, back to front, and he just grabbed the tee-shirt out of her hands and slipped it on her the right way.

\- We need to get off the train before the next stop – they could be waiting for us there. Come on, we have less than thirty minutes, we need to catch the moment when the train slows down.

And then she did the strangest thing, sitting back on the bed and covering herself with a blanket, as if she was going to spend a nice unhurried morning with a book and a cup of tea.

\- I’m not going anywhere.

\- What are you talking about? Of course you are.

\- There is something I haven’t told you. I’m not staying here. I planned to go to Asia, to get Frannie back, to start over… But I won’t be able to do it, not without the money or passports… And now that we are probably wanted for double murder, we won’t get out of the country. Quinn, I can’t run anymore, I just can’t. It’s over. You should go, I know you’ll make it, but I’m done... And Frannie – you were right, she’s better off without me, she deserves better, I mean, look at me –

He was already looking at her, his hands on her shoulders. Was it a breakdown? Had she missed some of her pills? But she seemed resolute and focused, speaking slowly, in a low voice… Her plan had been crazy, yes, crazy, but metaphorically so. And Carrie Mathison knew her way with crazy plans. But there was no time for persuasion, and throwing her out of the train against her will was not an option either. So he asked her a simple question, and it wasn’t even hard ¬– just letting the words drop from his tongue and stay hanging in the air:

\- Will you marry me?

\- What?!.. Will I what?!

\- Marry me. Not enough room for the one-knee thing, but I think you get the idea.

Carry was speechless. In the dim light of the night lamp, he couldn’t see her face properly, but for occasional flashes of lights from the window. He didn’t know what to add, because none of the conventional ways the situation could develop made any sense in the mess they had found themselves in. So he started blurting out every thought which pulsed through his head, pausing after each of them, desperately waiting for Carrie to respond in some way. 

\- Just don’t fucking give me that other stuff you’re dealing with right now. There is no other stuff, Carrie, there never was. And no time to consider, either. Take it or leave it, I need to know now. Because I admit, things look pretty fucking bleak for us here. And if we are to find our way out, I need to know exactly what I’ll – what we’ll be fighting for. Because I’ve been done for more years than you can imagine, I’ve been so through will all the shit I’ve been doing , and if you are, too – we still have enough bullets to end it right here.

Finally, she let out a hoarse, mirthless chuckle.

\- So what, it’s a yes or double suicide? That’s one way to persuade a woman.

\- Okay, no suicide for you. A yes or a lifetime in Russian military prison. A yes and a lifetime in Russian military prison. A no and the same respective options. 

\- Why the proposal then? What’s the point? I doubt they’ll let us share a cell.

\- You’re right, Carrie, no fucking point. None at all. Just answer.

He was clenching her shoulders now, almost shaking her, looking her in the eye with so much urgency and pain that she couldn’t bring herself to end it here. And then something else came up. She stirred, frowning, and freed herself, got on her feet and started pacing across the tiny cubicle of the compartment, clutching her hair.

\- Wait… I can’t… It’s not what I’m thinking about now, and, given that you probably won’t get to verify if I’m good for my word…

\- Okay. So what is it you’re thinking about now?

\- I’m thinking… I’m thinking there was a secret protocol Saul once came up with, enabling to contact the nearest sleeper cell from almost any location in the world. It was very sophisticated and top-secret, just me and him, actually, and we never got to test it in action. It is out of the question that I use it, but you’re still CIA, so you can try. If I remember all the details right – and Saul is not in league with Allison – we might stand a chance… We just need to get to the largest city in the region... Hitchhike there, actually.

\- A hell of a plan for someone who just wanted to lie down and die. Let’s get out of here, then.

\- Wait. Were you playing me?

Quinn’s first reaction was to protest this ridiculous accusation. But then, she still hadn’t given her answer.

\- Worked, didn’t it? On your feet, now.

Carrie looked dumbstruck, appalled to the utmost degree. He thought he’d got the answer he was looking for. However, he was desperately short of time to make things right again.

\- Ugh, this is so…

\- This is so what? This is so something you’d do yourself? 

\- You’re horrible.

\- Back at you. 

They were already in the vestibule, talking in hissy whispers, and they busted the lock again and stared in the unwelcoming forest, still dashing too quickly past them. Finally, the train went into a long curve and lost some of its speed. Carrie grabbed Quinn’s hand, already preparing for a jump, but he hesitated. They might never have this chance again. He couldn’t leave it like that. So he almost shouted in the clatter:

\- Carrie, I’m sorry. I wasn’t playing you. Will you marry me?

\- Fuck off!

But she didn’t let go of his hand – not only because it is too damn scary to jump off a train on your own – and he could swear she was hiding a smile when she looked away. And then they jumped.

The dawn was growing pink above the great pines and the grass was crispy with frost. Rare snowflakes were falling down from the sky, not enough to call it the first snow, but a tangible sign of approaching winter. The chilly stillness of the morning forest after days of stuffy, rocking trains felt like landing on another planet. Carrie shivered with cold, still feeling the vibration of the train under her feet. Quinn wrapped her shoulders in the blanket they had smuggled from the train and looked up in the sky – an old military habit strangely intertwined with a silent admiration for the new world they found themselves in. She caught his hand on her shoulder and pressed her lips to it. 

\- I will, you know.

\- I know.


End file.
